Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Skopje. The Bulgarian company EMKO is the buyer, which received the unused machine guns from the military storerooms in the Gotse Delchev barracks and the mine throwers, used by the Macedonian army, the correspondent of FOCUS News Agency informed from the capital of the former Yugoslavian republic.The Bulgarian company hired to transport the weapons is ‘Miroslava-Svetoslav Gotsov’. They provided the three freight trucks, which were supposed to transport the fourth shipment of the weapons to Bulgaria.The shipment itself was negotiated with the mediation of Metalski Zavodi Tito, which received the weapon as a compensation for performed services.In the beginning of 2005 the leadership of the General Staff of the Macedonian army decided to release the surplus of old weapons. According to the evaluation of experts, who were later interrogated, 300 machine guns were evaluated to USD 90,000 and the total amount that EMKO was supposed to pay for the weapons was slightly under USD 200,000.Metalski Zavodi Tito was supposed to supply machines and gas masks to the army amounting to USD 200,000. This was a contract, which was annulled by the Macedonian Minister of Defense Lazar Elenovski.The contract with EMKO was signed by the former Minister of Defense in the Ministry of SDSM Jovan Manasievski. The merchandise was shipped to Bulgaria.Minister Elenovski told Macedonian media that Macedonia didn’t know where the weapon was shipped as an end destination. Manasievski on his part, said that the government of the country, which had licensed the company, in this case this is Bulgaria, had guaranteed that the weapons would not be sold in regions, which are under the embargo of the UN.